The Hospital Ending was an alternate version of the "Sacrifice Chloe" ending planned for Life is Strange: Season 1, in which Chloe Price would have fallen into a coma instead of being killed. The final scene would have shown Max Caulfield waking up in the hospital next to Chloe's hospital bed instead of attending Chloe's funeral. Gaming files that were leaked after the release of Episode 1: Chrysalis had already led to speculations about a possible third ending since February, 2015.

With the appearance of an unused location file called "Hospital - Ending", it was speculated whether DONTNOD Entertainment originally intended to provide a third ending where Max ended up in the hospital - probably shot by Nathan Prescott after intervening in his and Chloe's confrontation in the bathroom at Blackwell Academy, and so preventing both Arcadia Bay's destruction and Chloe's death. This possible outcome inspired a lot of fan fictions. DONTNOD debunked the speculation, stating it was actually supposed to be a scene after Max was rescued from the Dark Room.

“It wasn't a third ending. It was when we were in the writing process, when you make the choice of sacrificing Chloe to save Arcadia Bay, we were hesitating between really killing Chloe like we did and maybe leaving her in a coma to offer hope that she could still be alive. But ultimately, when we were writing, we thought that it wasn't a good decision to go this way, because it would reduce the impact of your choice. So if you’re making the choice of sacrificing Chloe, we shouldn't make a cop-out and we should go all the way to really offer an end.”

The Hospital Room scene from Episode 4:Dark Room was originally created for this alternate Sacrifice Chloe ending, which is evident by a concept art done in an early stage of development (see above). Furthermore, it seems the hospital scene with Kate Marsh wasn't originally planned either; it was only added because the players liked Kate so much.[1] In addition to that, it's also possible that the funeral scene in the Sacrifice Chloe ending was originally intended as Kate's funeral but then got scrapped because they didn't want two funeral scenes in the game.